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Scotch-orange Marmalade

A marmalade made from oranges, sugar, water, and egg whites, simmered with rind and pulp until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Scotch-orange Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Weigh the oranges.

  2. Use one pound of crushed sugar for each pound of fruit.

  3. Pare off the yellow rind of half the oranges.

  4. Simmer the rinds in a covered pot until tender.

  5. Grate the yellow rind of the remaining oranges.

  6. Quarter the remaining oranges.

  7. Squeeze out all the juice and pulp from the quartered oranges, removing seeds and skin.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add ½ cup of cold water and the white of one egg to each pound of sugar.

  2. Let the sugar dissolve.

  3. Boil the sugar mixture slowly, skimming off any foam that rises.

  4. Pound the boiled parings or chop them finely.

  5. Add the parings or chopped pieces to the thickened syrup.

  6. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring often.

  7. Add the juice, pulp, and grated rind.

  8. Boil for half an hour or until transparent.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the bitter peel, pulp and juice that give marmalade its flavour and body.
Crushed sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, once boiled, thickens it into a set preserve.
Egg white
Its proteins rise to the surface as foam, which is skimmed off to leave a clearer marmalade.

The step that matters

Boil for half an hour or until transparent. Boiling concentrates the sugar and pectin until the syrup sets. Stop too early and the marmalade stays runny; boil too long and it darkens and turns bitter.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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